


Trip the Darkness

by 48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue



Series: Antifreeze AU Oneshots [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Badass Sam Winchester, Darkfic, Don't copy to another site, Episode: s04e18 The Monster at the End of This Book, Episode: s14e20 Moriah, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Sam, M/M, Sam Saying No to Trauma Today, Sam Winchester Centric, Trans Sam Winchester, Unreliable Narration, and an essay, basically the episode, bi sam winchester, but with Sam POV directly, major tags are mentioned but not explicit, spoilers for the finale, this episode made me feel a lot of things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-02-04 11:28:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18603613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue/pseuds/48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue
Summary: Sam faces down what it all means.





	1. And I'm Not Quite Sure That Poor Isaac Would Agree

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title a song by Lacuna Coil. S14E20 Sam POV time!
> 
> (Also otherwise: the endnotes have my ep reaction but know that there will be Sastiel and Jack and Sam fluff in another fic relatively soon to ease the painful parts in the finale.)
> 
> Also I'm gonna add to this chapter but rn this is my take.
> 
> Non-essential episode meta: It felt like it was almost classic S5+S11 again, and the end song is great.
> 
> Also Sam saying, "I already lost too much" and "NO" in this episode was GOOD SHIT!!!!!!!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Chapter title lyrics from the song Poor Isaac by Airborne Toxic Event).

"You're enjoying this," Sam realizes.

There's a flash behind Chuck's eyes when he shushes him, the same spark when Sam watched grow out of the fury of a broken guitar, and Sam sees something more familiar than he wants to, separate from the lost memories of the being behind his own eyes after Lucifer wrapped himself inside.

This was the father Lucifer lauded and then hated for locking him away and throwing out the key, the father of children who ordered them to fight to the death, who let them promise to murder each other, who didn't once tell them to stop even though he was right there, and Sam remembers every scream Lucifer and Michael made in the Cage, and of all the ways they tore each other apart, once upon a time, how they raged, and how every few moments or millennia Lucifer promised Sam and his brother no one else was listening.

Only Chuck was listening. He just didn't care. And he still doesn't care.

And silenced, once more, Sam waits, and the world turns on yet another pin.

\--

"He's saying he's been playing us." Sam says, and Chuck looks at him, then, really looks at him, and with a pit in his stomach Sam realizes the cruel, cruel truth all along. "The whole time."

"C'mon." Chuck backpedals, but Sam is done waiting for the shoe to drop and waiting for everyone else to make the calls and waiting for some kind of fairness and goodness to make this nightmare end.

"Our entire lives." Sam continues, "Mom, Dad, everything, this is all you because you wrote it all, right? Because what? Because we're your favorite show, because we're part of your story?"

And now that Sam remembers he can't stop remembering, can't stop knowing how Mary burned and knowing how that feels himself, or the way he can still feel the echo of demon blood dripping down his throat, curdling in his veins, how Dad, for all the things he's done and all the ways he was so broken, suffered so much anyway, sees him dead on the floor and Dean dead and gone to Hell because they buried him, so many times, and Sam remembers Michael in the Cage, how he burned and how Lucifer stole him back because he belonged to him ( _don't steal what is mine, brother, you will learn, Hell is mine and so is he-_ ) and Sam can trace every frozen tendril drawn over his ribs and eyelids and heart and soul and how Lucifer was like antifreeze in his lungs, stabbing through his every particle to weave and rip it into pieces, to mark his home there, and when he came to bear Sam forward into forever, how he would laugh at Sam's pain, and the plunge didn't even matter because that was undone, too.

How all of it, even breaking the script- there was no way to fix it. They were doomed from the very start.

Castiel's broken war with Raphael after Dean tried to pick up the pieces, the Leviathans, Cas letting Lucifer out to stop the Darkness-

Sam had sacrificed everything to save his family, to save the world. And in the end, it never would matter- because it would never be fixed.

The world was the Cage, and Chuck their jailer.

And in some ways, the apple never fell far from the tree at all.

\--

Chuck stutters, "Dean, no offense, but your brother is stupid and crazy."

And Sam finds his payoff for faith has been what is always was from the very moment his story began, when God handed Sam over to his favorite son turned abomination and left Sam to pick up all the pieces.

Except not quite- because he has always had faith in his brother, and this time, Dean, the Dean he knows, shines through.

And he doesn't give up. He honors their mother and what she would want, and takes himself off the playing field, like he did in another cemetery so many years ago.

\--

Dean makes his stand.

"My mom was my hero. And I miss her, and I will miss her every second of my life, but she would not want this." Dean says, staring God down, and then his voice breaks, just a little, as he remembers all the cemeteries they have risen from and all the ways he's seen Sam die. "And it's not like you even really care. Because Sam's right. The Apocalypse, the first go around, with Lucifer and Michael, you knew everything that was going down. So why don't you just snap your fingers and end it?" Dean yells.

"Look," Chuck starts in, but Sam won't let him. Can't, because he can't take it any more.

"And every other bad thing we've been killing, been dying over, where were you? Just sitting back and watching us suffer, so we can do this over, and over, and over again?" And now that Sam has started talking he can't stop, and just gets louder and angrier, "Fighting, losing people we love... When does it end? Tell me." Sam orders.

Even though, deep down, he already knows the answer.

 _End it, why would I end it?  You not knowing what’s real-_ And Sam remembers the phantom echo of laughter in all the whispers, _The paint slowly peeling off your walls, come on, man. This is the sweet spot. Why would I end it? It's not like we got HBO in the pit. All I got is you, floating over the coals with half a hope that you’re gonna figure it all out._

It's the same story, different verse, and it was always worse when Lucifer was right about all the wrong things after all.

\--

Chuck doesn't have an answer. Can't stop looking at Sam and what he knows, what he knows all too well, and tries to bring the script back on course but it's a battle that is already lost.

When Dean tells him to go to Hell, and Sam thinks the same, he cuts his losses, because, for all his failures, he never did like to be told he was wrong.

\--

Jack burns.

And Sam freezes, because like lightning those cosmic consequences run bone deep in his skull.

And Dean tries to stop it, only he can't-

And Sam can't let either of them fall, can't let this be the answer, all his hope, all his trust that people can be good and the world can be saved if people just tried to hold on to each other, not this pointless suffering and loss that only will happen over and over again, with no release-

And when none of it, none of the hard choices they had tried to make mattered...

Except when they did.

Because Sam won't do this dance one last time. 

Sam won't suffer this same Hell, over and over, a reminder of everything he could never escape and never protect the ones that he loves.

Sam shoots, and doesn't flinch.

He is going to end this, once and for all, free from the lacuna coil ready to play his torture, play eternity, play the loss of Dean over and over, and Jack, and Cas, like a bad vinyl that wouldn't stop stopping to the same track.

In the heat of the moment, Sam stares down oblivion, and it doesn't scare him any more. Because it is the only way to save anyone.

And for all the ways he's failed his son, he will not watch him die again. He will not stand by and do nothing.

\--

Sam shoots, and does not call this creature God.

\--

Sam miscalculates.

His moment, his singular "No," no not this time, always given up when it really counts, that holds true.

But he has forgotten that Lucifer was always his father's son, and that there is no room for mercy, not in the face of the rage the Archangels took for themselves from a God whose true face hides behind so many others.

But Sam has hesitated for so long, waiting and waiting and waiting with all the doubts weighing down his shoulders, because when has he even chosen right only for it not to be undone, and the moment he takes this one chance, he has forgotten the one rule that has always led to one place:

Sam, stricken him dumb and silent and quiet and shaking against the wall, a wallflower watching everything unravel before him, like he forgot with Lucifer, with Michael, with Gabriel, with Lucifer over and over, and now with Chuck all over again-

Trying to end the eternal never ends the way you want it to.

Sam should've remembered.

(No, Sam has always remembered, he just can't take the truth any more.)

When you are trapped in a Cage, you can fight and beg and scream and keep on saying no until the world is gone and scrubbed from your mind and all you feel is pain.

But the fighting, never giving in...

It didn't change the fact there was never any end to it at all.

\--

Chuck doesn't die.

But he hears Sam's prayer, and he twists it, just like his sons did, and that's where they learned it from.

"Fine, that's the way you want it? Story is over. Welcome to the end."

And Sam breaks more than he already thought he could, because Jack is gone-

That's when Chuck tells Sam he'll allow it all to end. When he can't get make them dance his tune any more.

And the only thing Sam can hold on to is that this time, he's fighting with his brother and his best friend at his back, with them to the bitter last stand if they don't make it through this time, and he's standing over the corpse of his son who was lost (they'll get them back, they'll find a way, they have to, because if no choice matters then Sam will make all the hard calls and keep on hoping anyway, God and the Universe and Death itself be damned), and Sam hopes, this one last time, when it is over...

He hopes they rest, and if there is no win condition, if this is how it ends...

All they can do is go down fighting, and pray there is rest somewhere waiting.

And even if it means nothing, even if it changes nothing, Sam is glad, if nothing else, that they said no when it mattered. That it means something, this time, even if it can't fix anything at all. But it still counts, somehow, it has to.

Their choice was still no, and it cannot be erased, even if it futile like so many other cruel realities have been.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The good: Sam facing down the narrative stacked against him by shooting God in the name of his son, brother, Cas, and everything he's ever suffered? Perfection. And Chuck calling him stupid? Great Lucifer callback, shows how the gaslighting show sets up Sam as a scapegoat ALL THE TIME on a meta level. (Out of context it felt so good. Like it was the actual narrative acknowledging how it is fucking Sam over specifically, and it also shows to show how maybe Dean's awful choices in the past were a result of the odds being stacked cosmically through the veneer that free will was only cosmetic. Doesn't change Dean's many character regressions, but on a meta level I like how his bad characterization is through the narrative writer's setup because they are the ones rewriting his progress every season. Also, as much as Dean's arc made me frustrated, at least they sold this even if this episode arc didn't feel earned.)
> 
> Otherwise: GUYS WE MIGHT GET LUCIFER BACK AND AZAZEL AND LILITH AND MEG AND ABADDON AND ALISTAIR AND RUBY AND ALLLLL THE VILLAINS I LOVE PLEASE YES!!! BRING BACK THE CROATS AND THE 4 HORSEMEN (BUT MOSTLY THE DEMONS AND LUCIFER). If nothing else Sam shooting God and getting them to suffer will make me so happy. Also... I love resurrecting the original characters. Like, I am on board for next season just on principle provided it isn't a cheap nostalgia thing that they ruin the show with, but I have hope now.
> 
> Castiel's fatherly talk with Jack was beautiful. Should Sam have been able to talk to Jack? Yes. But I still like they chatted and Jack got to be more himself and to verbalize things and Cas was a good Dad!!!!
> 
> Also: Stapler Queen is my fave. Billie is giving me taking no shit from God vibes and I support her.
> 
> The heartbreaking: WHAT HAPPENED TO JACK WAS NOT OKAY!!!!! Like, I am glad he's being chaperoned by Billie rn? YES. But still not okay HE DIED AND SAM HAD TO WATCH HIM DIE WITH CAS AND HAD THE WHOLE GONNA LET HIMSELF BE EXECUTED? I'm not okay there, but I also accept it because narratively I wanted some stakes like this but more with Sam leaping in front of Dean to stop him killing Jack, but I don't hate this plot point I just think they cheated in the emotional arc to get there. Anyway Jack is definitely a threat to Chuck so that made sense.
> 
> The BAD: I'm... not sure how I feel about Sam saying sometimes he wanted Jack dead. I think it was to try and get him to listen but I do not support it AT ALL. It felt wrong in so many ways. It also forces me to examine the new complications this adds to his characterization throughout S13-S14, because while my opinion is the writer's dropped the ball, maybe Sam really does have more hangups around Jack with the Lucifer power-grab soulless factor due to his other unresolved traumas which is why he didn't parent well as a cop out for this season. But I blame that on the dumb writing and character assassination where they had Sam bring back Jack via his soul and then didn't show any PARENTING b/c the writers were fucking allergic to letting Sam be Jack's primary caregiver even though it is KNOWN and they still fucked up because they didn't want to put in the work to have Sam and Dean more at odds. Sam's deference to Dean in this really bothers me but that's an issue with the show... (AND WHY SAM SHOOTING GOD as the AUTHOR definitely helped ease my bitterness there.)
> 
> Also, Cas trying to put Jack in a Cage... No.
> 
> Other concerns: WHAT HAPPENED TO LUCIFER? (and they better not have him team up with TFW as a redemption arc against God now if this is their methodology I'm just.... NO. SAM DESERVES BETTER THAN THAT!!!!!!!) And what the heck has happened to original Michael, not alt Michael? Is he out of the Cage now? Is Raphael back??? (and WHERE IS GABRIEL AND BALTHAZAR? Do they not get resurrection rights unless the Empty and Jack and Billie do something?)
> 
> Questions:
> 
> Okay Sam knew killing God destroys the universe a la S11, so was he trying to end the world and their spectacle of pointless suffering in the name of his family or everyone in the world? B/c I was getting a "everything built up in all the ways Sam hasn't dealt with his trauma" vibe combined with "THE WORLD IS THE CAGE and you and your brother and son and bff are trapped there forever" and Sam pulling the goddamn plug in the name of all that he loves. 
> 
> & how is Amara okay with Chuck's bs in here?
> 
> Chuck does kinda seem like he's a bit... too self aware of his own entitlement and that the authors changed his characterization from absent to malicious and more petty, but I can still buy it. Like I am not sure what is the smokescreen and the lie for him or not retroactively now, and I think what they did was a stretch but I heard this was the route they wanted to go in S11 and got shut down, so I still like the premise so I'm not gonna challenge it so it definitely matches the whole GIANT COSMIC SCALE never ends.


	2. Mr. Roboto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam thinks about what that first meeting really means after the fact when revisiting some old Chuck conversations.
> 
> (This is really old and I just wanted to wrap up part of it, I don't know if I'll add more or revisit this to edit it, but probably not).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title a song by Styx.
> 
> Hoo boy does S14E20 retroactively make Chuck EVEN WORSE!!!!!!!
> 
> TW: Chuck is just as bad at Lucifer for enabling him, and also because Sam, Cas, Jack, and Dean are his personal punching bags by proxy due to entitled curiosity which is so fucked up. Also major character death canonically.

Once they escape the cemetery in one piece, (carrying Jack's body, praying they can do something, anything at all), that's when the weight of it all hits Sam and nearly makes him unresponsive.

Chuck had killed Jack. And Sam had failed Jack yet again (he hadn't even had a chance to say sorry, to say he loved him, that he was still family and he's so sorry he failed him and Sam could choke on all the things he should've done better from the very beginning), and he's fractured so many things in so many pieces...

Wherever Jack is right now, Sam hopes he can hear his prayers and apologies and that he knows he was loved and that Sam should've tried harder.

And then, after the grief sinks too deep, and Cas still keeps a vigil over the body, no one wanting to burn it or try anything yet, there's just too many things wrong-

It's when Sam has had one too many drinks in the farthest corner of Jack's room when he thinks of all those years back, when he told Chuck they had guns and they would find him...

Sam wishes he shot Chuck earlier.

Just thinking about everything he knows now, when he'd held out for faith for so long...

Sam isn't sure what he can reach out and hold on to except for family, anymore.

\--

_“I didn't even write it into the books. I was afraid it would make you look unsympathetic.”_

_“Unsympathetic?” (The words had rankled then, hackles raised and all, because all Sam knows is he just didn't want to kill innocent people, and if the demons got exorcised and he felt a little more like his life wasn't spiraling out of control, that he was a freak but not evil, then maybe that was just par for the course when the only way out of a corner and to get on Lilith's level was to debase himself without compromising what the endgame is..._

_But the worst of it had just been the lying, and knowing that Dean would just think he's a monster if he knew. He'd been walking on that knife edge for so long-)_

_“Yeah, come on, Sam. I mean, sucking blood? You got to know that's wrong.”_

It feels sanctimonious, now. That Chuck knew all the things Sam had prayed for and feared and was grappling with and had thought of it as entertainment.

Blatant sadism, Sam understands. Watching Lucifer dish out punishment in the Cage, living it for hundreds of years, having it grow routine and intimate and predictable... 

Sam knew why Lucifer enjoyed making him suffer, how there was a clean-cut kind of simplicity in pain and nothing else to be gained except a release of all the rage so Sam could clutch at prayer and repentance for the sin of saving people from mistakes he'd been tricked into. It was suffering in the name of false salvation, salvation Lucifer demanded because anything else wasn't good enough for him.

But with what Sam knows of Chuck now, what he's seen since... Any similarity, he could understand. He might not stomach it, and it might hurt, but if Lucifer models after his father than that's something Sam can unpack, can rationalize and keep on lockdown somewhere in the deepest parts of his brain.

But pretending to be a friend, setting the stage for everything, letting Lucifer's anger fester with Michael's while passing judgement and waiting for Sam and Dean to fall into their trap? Pointing out just how little control Sam ever had under the veneer of trying to help?

That was twisted. That was new and just shy of the false realities Lucifer liked to make, except even in the false ones, Lucifer had never pretended his veneer was genuine because by then, Sam already knew any kindness given was easily taken away if Sam didn't perform up to standards.

Control wasn't in the equation. But Sam thought there had been some kind of balance, some kind of hope for God to be just shy of understandable instead of this human, mundane amusement that was altogether everything wrong with Lucifer's own jealous range of humanity that he pretended not to possess.

 _“Yeah, sure you can. I mean, if that's what this is.”_  
_“What else would it be?”_  
_“I don't know. Maybe the demon blood makes you feel stronger? More in control?”_  
_“No. That's not true.”_

Sam had lied back then, but it didn't matter now. God already knew. God already wanted his choices to not be choices.

What was worse was the pretend camaraderie, false and mask-like, even more of a mindfuck than Lucifer own brand of lying by omission or false pretenses of support had ever been, because at least those had been couched in self-interest and ownership and only gave way to violence and control when he had been thwarted and had it all taken away...

Everything else, with Chuck?

The false apologies?

The empty assurances?

The sympathy that Sam can now see staged and plotted out so neatly?

 _“I'm sorry, Sam. I know it's a terrible burden – feeling that it all rests on your shoulders.”_  
_“Does it? All rest on my shoulders?”_  
_“That seems to be where the story's headed.”_

Sam isn't sure there's anything to come back to with that, and then thinks of narrative callbacks, of Lucifer's promises in his dreams, the sympathy that wasn't sympathy...

_My heart breaks for you, Sam. The weight on your shoulders. What you've done what you still have to do... It is more than anyone could bear._

(Chuck must've known what Lucifer would say, and would know the sinking feeling in Sam's gut as he realized that there was no averting this after the fact.

In some ways, Sam doesn't regret taking the third option and swan diving into the Cage. Even if it had been allowed, even if his sacrifice didn't stave off Lucifer getting out, or what God would do to the world now, it had bought time, and it had saved people from the Devil, and it still felt a little like spitting in God's face for breaking his perfect script even a little, even if it had only served to make Chuck find them more interesting.)

_It had to be you, Sam. It always had to be you._

Yet if it all rested on his shoulders then God wouldn't have snapped and flipped the switch.

Unless that was what this was.

A false choice, a false dichotomy where Sam gets to be everyone's punching bag for the blame...

He had always been a good scapegoat.

_"Lucifer was never a villain."_

He should have realized then and there, when they were fighting yet another one of God's battles while the Devil stole Sam's space again, filled his room with icy cold long after he'd even left, the walls warded shut for good measure. When Chuck had hardly paid it any mind, and blamed Sam for letting Lucifer out a second time when that had been the last thing he'd do.

The worst part, the worst, is that Sam should have seen this coming. That the only way to exert any kind of control, any kind of autonomy to be had, was to take the blame for not knowing better. For not realizing that for all Lucifer's lies, in his assessment of his father, that knife hadn't just been to twist, but had been a truth only to drive the pain in further.

How could Sam have thought Chuck was ever going to care? That he ever did?

And while Sam knows Lucifer was responsible for his own choices, that he chose to be a monster, he also knows if Chuck thinks he can control everything, that every creation remains only a chess pieces moving on the board, only Sam is not cooperating any more...

If God really wanted the Devil, and allowed him, and derived entertainment from everything else they'd fought since, then there really was little difference father to son.

And the world deserved better. It deserved to bloom and thrive on it's own, heedless of the one who made it.

And Sam would make him answer for it. For Jack. For Dean and Cas and Bobby and the world and Jo and Ellen and himself.

It may be futile. But they've beaten all the other odds, maybe not winning, but if Sam has learned anything from his life that Pyrrhic victories aren't always empty, if there's someone left to rebuild.

 

 

 

 


End file.
